Staff Pick: Anna Ranger quietly making a name for itself

Wednesday

"I just wanted this to pass," sings Nathan Snell on "Meat Digging." "I never wanted anything to last."

“I just wanted this to pass,” sings Nathan Snell on “Meat Digging.” “I never wanted anything to last.”

Yet Snell has been crafting lovelorn pop tunes under the name Anna Ranger since 2003, enlisting a pair of heavy hitters to help bring his bucolic visions to life: bassist Philip Park (Haynes Boys) and drummer Sam Brown (New Bomb Turks). On last years’s Dolphin Blue EP, the trio constructed swooning tunes that nodded to everyone from Morrissey (a clear vocal influence on Snell) to Magnetic Fields (note the synthetic patter of “Swimming & Crawling”), and had many looking forward to a full-length.

In the months that followed, Anna Ranger kept a relatively low profile; the band doesn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, and live performances are relatively rare. Recently, however, a video posted to YouTube noting the group’s long-in-the-works debut LP, Swimming & Crawling, is forthcoming on Stochastic Releases, and this concert is scheduled to serve as a release party.